


==>Dave: Be the First-Time Daddy

by Quilly



Series: Married with Grubs [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Gen, Phase One, and Django Strider as the baby, dave raps under pressure, featuring Minnesota Madsden as the foster mother, in which dave and terezi begin building their miniature army, incredibly self-indulgent babyfic, of miniature people, of the Married with Grubs event, part of the Sherlockbound/Fun with Dirk and Jane universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-06
Updated: 2014-01-06
Packaged: 2018-01-07 18:45:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1123129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quilly/pseuds/Quilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your name is Dave Strider and you're gonna do this thing, you're gonna be a dad.</p>
<p>(Part of the Married with Grubs event for the Sherlockbound/Life with Dirk and Jane series. Phase One:  Babies, 1/6)</p>
            </blockquote>





	==>Dave: Be the First-Time Daddy

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, all! This is an event going on at the Sherlockbound askblog (asksherlockbound.tumblr.com, check the sidebar for the Married with Grubs button) and I'm moving the drabbles over to here for other people to access, so voila! This is the first of six in Phase One: Babies of that event! If you're curious about what Sherlockbound/Life with Dirk and Jane is, check my page for the series Life with Dirk and Jane! 
> 
> Enjoy!

Your name is Dave Strider and you are cuckoo-kachoo for your troll girlfriend life partner thing.

 

She’s sitting at the kitchen table wearing your shirt. Just your shirt. She’s almost too tall for it, but hey, Terezi wants to walk around with her nethers open to the breeze, you’re chill with it. She lets you do it all the time. She’s reading some file. You decide now is the time to make a nuisance of yourself and shove your head up under her file, giving her your best Strider puppy-dog eyes.

“I so wanna have your babies,” you say, and she laughs and licks your nose.

“We’re financially stable and have a pretty good place,” she says. “With some baby-proofing I think we’ll be set. Please name the day you wish to become impregnated.”

You look at her. “Now.”

She looks at you. “Now?”

“Now.”

You can’t really become impregnated, but she gives it her best shot.

Later, you play with her hair and she nips at your fingers, and the words are coming out of your stupid mouth faster than you can hold ‘em back.

“What if we did get a kid, though?”

Terezi rolls over on top of you, blank red eyes scrunched under the weight of her frown.

“A kid?”

“A child. A grub. Un bambino.”

“I…okay,” she says, and you blink.

“Okay?”

“Okay,” she grins. “Let’s look into getting a kid.”

Well, alright then. You kiss her and scramble for the laptop, hopping into your boxers on the way. It hasn’t sunk in yet that you have just suggested that you become parents—and that she agreed to it—though it becomes a little more real when the inevitable question comes: baby, or grub?

It takes a little over a month of weighing the pros and cons to figure it out, but for your first kid (because oh yes you are having multiples. You have a need, a need for…well, not speed, but a brood of Striders unleashing their irony on the world? _Yes_ ), you decide on a human baby. Surrogate motherhood, in fact. Your sperm and a selected egg donor’s ovum all cooking in a cool little cocktail inside some other woman’s oven. Not Rose or Jade or Jane or Roxy, this much you know. No. That would be _way_ too weird.

Terezi gets to pick the donor. You get to pick the surrogate. It all falls into place…and now you get to go actually…you know… _do_ it.

Given who Terezi Pyrope is and the force of nature that is her motivational drive, she has an appointment scheduled with both agencies within a week. Your throat kind of clogs up when you think about how you’re actually making this happen. You don’t tell your Bro about it yet. He’s still adjusting to life with Jane again (speaking of which, you need to have a _talk_ with her when you get a moment), working, paying rent, all that jazz. Besides, you don’t even know if you and Terezi will be approved or not. It’s too early to say.

Terezi did her homework; the agencies she chose work together a lot of the time for human-troll couples, so while the examination process is doubly tough, the wait time is halved. It takes all of two months for all the paperwork to process and the picking and choosing to begin.

Terezi chooses a girl who donated in college, a bright kid with bad financial luck. Blond, fair skin, kind of watery eyes. You glance at her. She shrugs back and nods.

As for the surrogate, you know her when you see her. She’s tall, big-boned, dark-skinned, and looks like a jolly elf that could deliver toys to children if there was such a person in real life. She’s chipper. Friendly. Her name is Minnesota Madsden. Terezi loves her instantly.

“If the embryo takes, we’ll let you know,” you are promised, and Minnesota claps you on the back as you force a smile and Terezi does the talking.

“Don’t you two worry none, I ain’t never lost an embryo yet,” Minnesota winks, and you feel a little better.

Woman knows her uterus; the call comes soon enough, and while Terezi is off at court you frantically babyproof the apartment. Terezi thinks you’re overstepping the line at padding the stairs. Well, she was never kicked down them, so there. Mrs. Fitzpatrick might’ve slipped, but hey, the stairs are plushy now so it’s not like she broke her hip or anything.

It’s simultaneously the longest and the shortest nine months of your life.

You tell Dirk, of course, and he just stares at you like you’ve sprouted nubs and crapped rage snake.

“A baby?” he repeats blankly.

“Yup,” you nod. “In eight months. Gonna have a bouncing bundle of joy all our own.”

“Baby,” he repeats again. “Huh.”

You sit there in the silent Strider camaraderie common to your kind, and are thoroughly surprised to see a raised fist in front of your face when you glance back at him.

“Congrats, li’l man,” he grins.

“You’re gonna be an uncle,” you feel the need to add. He pauses, during which time you take advantage of his confusion and return the fist-bump.

“Oh yeah,” he says. “Uncle Dirk.”

You pretend not to hear him when he keeps repeating it to himself every so often during the rest of your furious campaign to crush each other at pop culture references (or a round of Jeopardy; semantics, semantics).

Minnesota comes over all the time, because she has a few kids of her own and you have no idea what you’re doing, so you plumb the resource you have. None of your friends have gotten kids yet, though you know Rose and Kanaya have been talking about it for years now, and she’s as close to a mother as you’re gonna get. Must be the booming personality and the self-assured grinning.

She runs you through bottles and diapers and onesies, so by the time her belly is the size of Texas and she’s complaining about her feet, you feel like you might have a handle on this. You’ve been coaching Terezi every time she’s home, but she’s been weirdly quiet lately. Minnesota thinks she’s nervous. You wonder if she’s thinking about something far worse.

In point of fact, Minnesota is at the apartment again, telling you why you shouldn’t name your kid Broseph (not that you know the gender yet; you wanted it to be a surprise, and Terezi was alright with that), when her water breaks.

You look at the puddle, then look at her, and she starts _laughing_ , snorting and beating the table, and you guess you understand why she’s been wincing every so often this morning.

You call Terezi, who affirms she’ll meet you at the hospital, grab your duffel, and help Minnesota to your classy new minivan (forget John, you love your vagina on wheels and it runs better than his crappy old clunker anyway). You start babbling on the way to the hospital to take your mind off things as you swerve into traffic and around little old ladies with walkers, until Minnesota puts her hand on your shoulder.

“Honey, I know this is your first time, but you gotta either shut up or stop driving like a maniac,” she tells you between sharp breaths. “Your kid ain’t gonna be here for a little while longer and it’s your choice but I don’t think the first thing you want it hearing is a bad rap about salad tongs.”

Yeah. Okay. Be cool, Strider. Be cool.

You shut up and keep driving like a maniac.

Terezi beats you there, but she was already downtown so it’s no big. She helps Minnesota out and wheels her down the hall. In this moment, you are very glad she’s stronger than you.

And, well, things sort of blur, but between you on one side, Terezi on the other, and Minnesota pushing in the middle, something…happens.

You hear the healthy set of lungs first, loud as a jet engine, it seems, so loud you can’t hear anything else. The doctor’s “it’s a boy” seems to echo like an afterthought as he holds up…your kid.

Your kid. Yours.

Obviously yours, look at that pudge. You were a fat baby too, according to your ironic baby album. Kid needs to get cleaned up, but you can see the sparse peachy hairs all over his head from here. You reach your free hand around and grip Terezi’s very tightly.

“Congratulations, Dave,” Minnesota says, and winks at you when you look at her.

“Congratulations me? Congratulations you, you carried him for us,” you manage to croak. You grab her hand a little tighter. “Thank you.”

She mops at her forehead, still breathing like a winded horse. “It’s what I do, honey. Are you ready to hold him?”

Mutely you turn and are met with a soft-wrapped little bundle of Strider, and you are terrified. You look across Minnesota at Terezi, who is sniffing as hard as she can but hasn’t crossed around yet. You look at the nurse, who smiles at you, and gently accept the teeny tiny bundle of blankets.

He’s so small.

And squally, man; never give this kid a megaphone, or he’ll deafen everyone in the tri-state area. You bounce him a little.

“Sssh, little dude,” you say softly. “It’s alright. It’s okay. Daddy’s here.”

And that’s when it hits you, really hits you, that you’re doing this. You’re a daddy. You are someone’s progenitor. You have begat seed. Holy messy diapers, Batman.

Terezi noses at your cheek and kisses it. “He smells amazing.”

You blink hard and nod. “He’s—he’s beautiful.” He is tiny and wrinkly and red and kinda gross and absolutely, abso _lutely_ gorgeous. Hello, Dave Strider, welcome to your maternal side.

“Can…can I…?”

You don’t think twice, carefully shifting the baby around until he’s situated in Terezi’s bony arms, and the look she gives you is priceless.

“I get a turn next,” Minnesota says, and you and Terezi both laugh. You can’t pay her enough for this. You don’t know if you ever could.

As per your agreement, Terezi gets to name this one. She picks the name Django. You have no objections whatsoever. He’s totally a Django. Little Django Strider. Your little dude.

You’re not saying you stay up every night watching him sleep…but you stay up every night watching him sleep. It’s hard to move when the center of your universe grabs your finger and doesn’t let go. He’s got red eyes, too. A little sensitive to light, like yours. Terezi procures a pair of dark red shades just baby-sized and snogs you thoroughly as soon as he’s been fed, and if your world isn’t absolutely perfect right now you’re not sure it ever will be.


End file.
